Family Life

I go back to work this morning & I’m feeling a little bleary because I was at a honking huge wedding yesterday. How honking huge,  you may ask. Eleven bridesmaids, 11 groomsmen, 7  priests, 3 flower girls, 1 ring bearer and 1 crown bearer (it was a Greek Orthodox wedding & the bride & groom wear crowns, called stefana). There was a lot of food & drink. I ate too much & stayed up later than I normally do. I’m a light weight with alcohol, so at least I exhibited some self-control there, even though I walked to the wedding because the church was 3 blocks from my house.  The bride & groom were young people I’d taught Sunday School , although they weren’t in class together. I’ve known their families for about 15 years and I was surrounded by tons of people I knew, many of whom I think of as my Oregon family.

Saturday, I went to an engagement party where there was also a ton of food, drink, friends and family.

It was a good weekend to read Zebra Forest, a debut novel  by Adina Rishe Gewirtz.

Ever since she was small, Annie’s had three wishes:
1. Get tall
2. Have an adventure
3. Meet her father.

She tells us her father is dead, that her mother abandoned them to live with their grandmother, who lives in an isolated hose, near a birch and oak forest they call the Zebra Forest. Annie & her brother, Rew, spend a lot of time reading, playing and imagining in the forest.  There is a prison on the other side of the forest that employs a lot of people in the nearby town. When a large group of prisoners escapes, some of Annie’s wishes come to pass and she learns that all the stories her grandmother told her about her family, weren’t exactly the way things happened.

Although Annie is eleven, I think it the target audience is older than that. There are some dark family stories,  grandma’s mental health is questionable and the book is set in the summer of 1980 against the backdrop of the Iran hostage crisis. This is a beautifully written novel that a mature reader would enjoy.